


Burn Scars

by kat8cha



Category: Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel 616
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-29
Updated: 2013-03-29
Packaged: 2017-12-06 21:17:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/740258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kat8cha/pseuds/kat8cha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint is a mess of emotional pain and keeps falling for women who mirror it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Burn Scars

“I don’t like spies.” Clint can’t remember when he said this or who he said this to. He knows he said it, at some point, and isn’t sure if it was accusatorily to an enemy (or friend), off-handedly to a fellow Avenger or drunkenly to a random barfly. Or maybe he said it to himself, repeatedly, in the dark of night.

He can’t remember but he knows he said it.

_He loved Natasha with all his heart, still loves her with everything he is, but the passion that burned within him at first has now left scars behind, ugly emotional things that have twisted him up inside._

“Can you translate? I don’t speak spook.” To Natasha regarding Coulson, to Natasha regarding a lot of things actually. To Steve or whoever it closest, depending on what team up he’s on and who he is working with. It is a statement he has said jokingly and seriously and it is true. He doesn’t speak the language. Mostly deaf for all those years and he’s still handicapped by it, struggling to recognize and parse patterns and inflections. He prefers the straightforward approach, punch in in the face if it doesn’t say the right things, not riddles and vocal crossword puzzles.

He understands spook though, understands damage that effects those who practice espionage. How could he not after loving who he has loved? But it is a knowledge that has been gained over years and through heartbreak and betrayal.

_He reacted to Bobbi. Impulsively, emotionally, badly, and he will always regret it. Years later he understands, when his friends have been buried, when the world has burned and darkened and he has died (twice at the hands of someone he loved and trusted) and been reborn. But at the time he was still aching inside and his scars burned hot._

_It’s too soon after Natasha, after Barney, after Egghead and Sheila._

_He will always love her but fear had overcome._

He’s not subtle (he’s really, really not) and the pattern is obvious once you learn to spot it. Although it’s difficult to spot. Clint always has someone, a crush or a romance or a wife, and it’s become a joke to some of his friends. “Spies aren’t my kink.” He snaps at Kate when she makes a teasing joke. He takes it back, apologizes, because he can’t wholly deny it.

_Jess is a tangle of emotional scars, vulnerabilities and bad coping mechanisms. She is beautiful, smart, funny, and interested. Clint can’t imagine not wanting her, not after working with her, but he doesn’t want the pain. He knows it will come. She is smart and beautiful and a former spook, just like the rest. If he doesn’t let her get close, if he screws up quick and hard, maybe it won’t hut so much._

_Maybe he won’t ignite yet again._

And some nights he wakes up unable to breathe, Jess and the Skrull Queen, Bobbi on a hospital bed, Nat and Wanda and the threat of death and betrayal, the shadow of Osborn and registration choking him. It’s too much, far too much, and on those nights he drinks a pot of coffee and slips out onto the fire escape, bow clutched in his hand. How he is still alive (he isn’t, not really, he’s died twice, how is he still alive?) and functional after everything that has happened to him is a question he tries really hard not to think about on those nights.

Because there isn’t enough target practice in the WORLD to answer that question.


End file.
